Although, in the interest of maintaining an honest friendship with you, I do have to be blunt. I will not, ever, EVER wear hiking sandles with socks. I can embrace the rain, the overcast skies, the mud, the hipsters, and everything else you throw at me, but a girl has to have standards. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

Anyways, in response to some of the comments my new friends (YES, Bean, they are my FRIENDS) wrote to me….

POA girl said: “I’ve been told that Clackamas has more horses per capita then any other county in the country. I don’t know if it is true or not but oh boy do we have horses here. Wanna know another secret? There are a number of Canadian horses here (they look like foundation style Morgans). You prefer other types? We got it all.“

Is this true? I don’t care if it is or not. I’m going to say it’s true. And even though I will be living in Colombia County, I’m just going to pretend that it’s Clackamas so I can brag. I think it took me all of thirty seconds after receiving this comment to google “Canadian Horse”. This is what I found:

I immediately went to equine.com to see how much they are going for… Drat. Does anyone have about $10 to $20 thousand dollars I can borrow? I can repay you in angry DragonMonkies and Squidgelet puke. Let me know if you want to take me up on the offer – I have plenty of “currency” on hand.

Albigear said: ” One time I went there I got to see the naked bike ride (7,000 strong?…”

And then she went on to say some other stuff, but I have to be honest, I quit paying attention after that. Because, seriously. Wait a second. Hold on there.

NAKED BIKE RIDE? As in… naked people? On bikes? Riding? 7,000 of them, all at once?

But… but….but people have flibbly bits. And dangly thangs. And wobbly fat. And…

Gross.

How do you even sit comfortably on your bike seat? Wouldn’t it chafe after awhile? What about when you have to stand up to pedal up a hill… what then? Sure, it may not bug you… but what about the person behind you? Do they really need that view? Or worse…what if you have one of those comfortable gel bike seats— the kind that’s sorta made out of absorbent material? How in the world could you get that thing clean enough to ever lend it out to a friend after riding around naked on it?

“Oh, hey, Jack… Yeah, no problem. You can borrow my bike. Oh, and hey, here’s a paper towel. You might want to give it a quick wipe before you sit down. I just spent two sweaty hours with that skinny front portion jammed up against my….”

GROSS. Bad, Portland. Bad. I’m giving you -2 coolness points.

Snipe asked if the house we’re moving to is horse-friendly. Sadly, it isn’t. We had to work within our budget, and unfortunately, we had to choose between “horse-friendly” and “land with an actual house on it”. I tried convincing The Bean that it would be a really great adventure to spend the next few years squatting in a tent on some property while we saved up enough money to build on it, but he wasn’t buying it.

That said, the area I’m moving to is fairly horse friendly. While I can’t have a horse on my property, I was able to find several reasonable-looking barns close by. In fact, there are some downright gorgeous barns nearby.

Okay, what I really want is to one day have a covered arena like that on my property. But unless I make it big as an author one day and just have stupid money to throw around, I don’t think that’s very likely. So, instead, I will settle for lusting after other people’s arenas.

For the record, you guys are allowed to browse the sales page all you want, but I already have dibs on “Quik Like A Jackrabbit.” No, I do not have $12,000 dollars. And no, I have no idea what I’d do with a cow horse with that much fancy breeding— I expect I’d just fall off a lot.

Even so, it doesn’t matter. I call “dibs”, and everyone knows that “dibs” is an all-powerful claim. Even Urban Dictionary recognizes it.

“Dibs: The most powerful force in the universe, it is used to call possession of a certain object or idea. There are very few things that trump dibs.”

You can’t argue with a dibs.

While we’re on the subject of “dibs”ing, I’ve saved the best thing for last:

I’m going to be living near a Morgan horse farm. Admit it. You’re jealous.

Dibs.

Dibs.

Same horse, but still Dibs.

This one’s so mine it’s not even funny. Uber dibs.

Also mine. Dibs.

Quit asking. I already called dibs.

Yes, I already called uber dibs on him, but I just wanted to be clear: He’s mine. Back off. I saw him first, and if you continue to encroach on my dibs, I don’t think we can be friends any more. I mean, look at him.

No, seriously. Look closer:

No, that’s not photoshop. He really does have “Property of Becky” permanently tattooed on his hindquarters. It would just be embarrassing for you if you tried to claim he was yours.

I understand that it’s very greedy of me to call dibs on so many of their horses, but I’m afraid that’s what happens when you’re second to the table. Besides…. finder’s keepers.

Now all I have to do is work on the email where I introduce myself to the farm owners and ask to visit. I’ve been working on this stupid thing for weeks. I swear, I put less time and effort into dating The Bean than I am into trying to hit just the right note with the owners of this farm.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to word a “Hi, nice to meet you” note which will result in them saying, “Hi, Becky, we’ve been waiting for someone like you to write! Why don’t you come on by and meet our herd? You can basically pretend that they’re all yours and groom and ride them any time you want. We’ll even provide free baby sitting and gas money for the drive!”

I’m pretty sure that Snohomish County (where I live, in Washington State) is the highest horse-per-capita in the country, but now I’ll have to research it. (will do that at work, I try not to do research at home…well, not often).

And BTW, Fiddle is Canadian. And also a Horse. And her siblings and cousins (Canadians and Horses all) are well-within your budget! Why you wait?

We have naked bicyclists in Seattle, btw. Portland is copycat city. This wiki page: http://bit.ly/dZ6CE was clearly written by a local!

Canadians sell for much cheaper in… well… Canada… Its just you silly Americans that over price stuff. There have been a couple for sale locally in the under 5000 range. The shipping would kill you though!

Well, to be fair, most of the naked bike riders had shoes on. And usually a backpack or something to hold their clothes while they rode. There were a lot of dangly bits. The most interesting bikers were the ones on double decker tandem bikes where the person in front sits way higher than the person in back. Talk about an unfortunate view…

The secret to the naked bike ride is that it happens in Portland, and Portland has more microbreweries in the city limits than any other city in the world. We trump Germany that way. Also, if I managed to find someone who actually pays me to ride, as out of shape as I am (I haven’t really ridden since my third year of college, taking a stroll on a couch/Belgian doesn’t count) you too can find a pony. Or two. This I have seen in the crystal ball, so of course there is no doubt!

WV: Outiesti Eavation: All the prizes and praise you will get your first time out on a horse again!

Dear Becky:POA Girl here. The following are out of date pictures of my brother of another mother, Luca. http://www.stoneybrookstable.com/luca.htmlHe just earned his Supreme in Driving (already has it in halter). He also rides. He lives in Clackamas Co. Welcome to the neighborhood.PS. I don’t wear birkenstocks, I wear Keens and purple rain boots (not at the same time).

I am only 2 hours south of Portland and my little sister lives up there. She is also a hair stylist at Moxie for Hair downtown. I’ll hook you up! Maybe when I come up to visit we could have coffee and stare at each other uncomfortably? It’ll be fun!

Work on it. Seriously. Before I got pregnant (oh…AKA before i found OUT i was pregnant) I contacted a small stable that owned about 7 horses, some never ridden and brought in from shelters/neglect and found on people’s foreclosed property, and they literally asked me to come out there whenever and ride them, train them, play, feed, groom, whatever the heck I felt like doing. Just for someone to be there. 10 weeks of heaven until I found out my flu wasn’t a flu. And then another week for my husband to convince me riding green horses wasn’t in the mitsake – I mean, baby’s best interest.